


Not a Suicide Song

by whosays_penultimate



Category: X JAPAN
Genre: M/M, Nostalgia, Not Beta Read, Stream of Consciousness, bit of a weird thing really, not chronological, random episodes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:13:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23494384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whosays_penultimate/pseuds/whosays_penultimate
Summary: They were such different people, with little hope of understanding or healing each other’s very private scars.
Relationships: Toshi/Yoshiki (X JAPAN)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	Not a Suicide Song

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This story is as fictional as the new X Japan album. Hahaha. See what I did there? :D

It was a late night show (too late, in Toshi’s opinion, who was a morning person), and Toshi was tired and bored to hear the host extol the virtues of his and Yoshiki’s epic friendship. It wasn’t really like that. Of course, there was affection and a sense of belonging, born out of familiarity and shared sorrows.

But deep down, they were such different people, with little hope of understanding or healing each other’s very private scars.

Next to him, Yoshiki laughed, covering his mouth and attempted to arrange his perfectly styled hair that didn’t need arranging and snapped right back in place. The gesture was so familiar to him that Toshi couldn’t help but smile. Yoshiki was sometimes still awkward in public, despite his seemingly masochistic desire to always be the focus of attention. But many years of actually being in the spotlight had cured somewhat his crippling shyness. At least now he could be persuaded to talk.

“Yes, we’ve been friends since kindergarten,” Yoshiki was telling the host. “We were four years old-“

“Well, we knew each other, but we weren’t actually friends back then”, Toshi interrupted.

“That’s right”, Yoshiki agreed, turning to him. “We became friends later when we realized we both liked rock music.”

“I was very impressed that Yoshiki went to see KISS live and I wanted to know all about it.”

“And then we started our first band.”

“Yes. We called it _Dynamite_ ”, Toshi laughed, for the benefit of the host who was vigorously nodding, an endeared smile plastered on her face.

Despite the years spent apart, he and Yoshiki never lost the ease they always had around each other, playing off one another’s cues, to the delight of onlookers.

But can friendship really be built on nothing but a shared love for the same kind of music? Maybe once, when they were kids, teenagers, each of them outcasts in their own way, both with a fierce desire to prove themselves worthy. But so much has happened since.

So much has changed.

Back in Tateyama, the camaraderie flowed smoothly between the two kids who liked rock music, unlike many of their peers. They did not talk much or in depth, but had a superficial understanding of each other using curt, common words, to reaffirm their kinship. Toshi did not know when Yoshiki’s father died, but he did know when Yoshiki got his first drum kit.

“You spend too much time with Yoshiki, people will think you’re gay”, Toshi’s mother told him once, spitefully.

Even though Toshi knew she was resentful of him wasting time with music instead of doing what she considered to be productive things, the accusation stung. He didn’t know much about being gay, but by the way the word was thrown his way, with the clear intent to hurt, he took it as a big insult, like his mother wanted to make him feel he was less of a man.

“Don’t you worry”, he mock-reassured her, with as much swagger as he could put into it, “I got time for girls, too. And one day I will be a big star and girls will throw themselves at me.”

But that unwelcome word lodged itself in Toshi’s mind, and he could not help picking at it from time to time, like at a scab, with equal parts disgust and fascination.

He was definitely aroused by girls, their warm voices and soft breasts and curves. But there was also an excitement, a more familiar and wholesome feeling of pleasure that he felt at the sight of good-looking men. But that could’ve been nothing more than his innate appreciation for everything beautiful. At least that’s what he thought at the time. Only much later, would Toshi come to realize that there was more than abstract appreciation, there was sexual curiosity and a hope for romantic fulfillment.

And then there was Yoshiki who was... well, he strongly _was._ A presence. Toshi didn’t need long to become fascinated by him, and only a little longer to become disenchanted by him. And then, just as he was telling himself that his infatuation with Yoshiki was over, he heard other boys making fun of him, cruelly, as only teenage boys could. Toshi felt his blood boil inside him. It was more than anger, it was hurt, as if he was the one being mocked. And pity. Pity because Toshi knew they were somehow right. Toshi didn’t fight those boys, although he still wanted to, instead he went home and tried to get rid of the new weird feeling that hurt so strangely.

Years later, in a nondescript hotel room, he’d spend minutes laughing alone in the shower, a little hysterically, as the realization would finally hit him. He never imagined that this is how love would visit him – he imagined it would be uplifting, born out of joy and a certainty that the object of his affection was extraordinary, not out of pity and and a hesitant tenderness fueled by his instinctive knowledge of everything that Yoshiki did not want to show. And while Toshi did not want to love like this, Yoshiki definitely did not want to be loved for these reasons. Oh no, his ambition was to be adored as an intangible, mysterious object of magnetic attraction, praised endlessly for his beauty and talent. Toshi could not do that, there was too much give and too little take for his liking. And while Toshi did believe Yoshiki was both talented and beautiful, neither were in themselves the reasons why he loved him. Sometimes he enjoyed watching Yoshiki try on new things – new looks, new behaviours, like trying on different outfits, with genuine, but passing delight – neither of these sides alone reflecting his true personality. He enjoyed seeing his little tics, which Yoshiki did unconsciously, despite being made aware of them, and trying hard to supress them. Sometimes he could almost guess at Yoshiki’s thought process, as he watched him sit self-consciously, assuming a studied expression, meant to be both demure and seductive, fragile and dangerous. There was a tingle of excitement too, to see how other people were affected by the image Yoshiki projected. Toshi felt satisfied, as if it was somehow his accomplishment too.

They were still in their teens when one day, sitting next to each other on a narrow bench, knees bumping, Yoshiki suddenly turned to him and kissed him. It happened so fast and abruptly that at first, Toshi couldn’t process it. He was only aware of something slick and hot, with the promise of something more, a tingle and a sensual desire so overpowering that his sense of awareness briefly melted.

By the time Toshi recovered, Yoshiki had long pulled back and was acting as if nothing happened. Confused, Toshi did the same. But he could not stop thinking about it. It had been Toshi’s first kiss and he veered between being angry that it was stolen from him unawares, only to fade into obscurity and not even be addressed, and wanting it to happen again and again...and maybe with other people too, just to compare if it felt the same.

A few days later, Toshi asked out a girl and kissed her before he could overthink it. The girl tasted like sweet bubblegum, her lips were thin and she nibbled at his lips methodically but dispassionately. Toshi was slightly disappointed, even as he felt the familiar stirring in his groin. It felt good and the girl was pretty and she seemed to like him. But Yoshiki had kissed him like he was driven, like he wanted to brand him, like he wanted to indict Toshi into a secret mystery.

“Why did you kiss me?” Toshi imagined himself asking Yoshiki. And if Yoshiki still pretended nothing had happened, or made a joke, or anything like that, Toshi would just grab him and yell in his face: “Am I nothing more than your toy?” Then he would leave and let Yoshiki fend for himself. Screw the band and everything.

But in the end, of course Toshi did no such thing. He carried on as if nothing happened, that being one of this many talents.

Years later, during a radio appearance, and without even looking at Toshi, Yoshiki told the host brightly:

“Me and Toshi, we kissed once.”

There was laughter and teasing from the host, followed by:

“Aw, when you were children. In kindergarten, a kiss on the cheek, kawaii..”

“No”, Yoshiki said, with some annoyance. “We kissed properly, on the mouth, when we were in highschool.”

“Is that true, Toshi??” the host turned to him.

“I don’t remember”, Toshi said. “Maybe.”

Yoshiki punched his shoulder, laughing, and Toshi retaliated by kicking Yoshiki on the back so hard that he slumped forward, hitting his head on the mic. Yoshiki laughed even harder at that. The host joined in, like it was the world’s funniest joke. Eventually Toshi decided to laugh as well, just because it would have been suspicious if he didn’t.

“Just in case the listeners can’t tell, Yoshiki is drunk”, Toshi added.

“So are you.”

“True. We’re all drunk.”

“I was just surprised that you brought it up”, Toshi said, afterwards.

Yoshiki tried to brush him off, but Toshi continued:

“That was my first kiss, did you know that?”

“Mine too”, Yoshiki said, earnestly.

“Really?” Toshi asked, with some surprise.

“Oh? I was so good, then?” Yoshiki teased, laughing happily, his eyes sparkling.

Toshi laughed with him, this time genuinely. He wanted badly to kiss Yoshiki right then – he loved a smiling, happy Yoshiki.

“Why did you do it?” he finally asked.

“Did it upset you?” Yoshiki said, and it was just like him to ask something like this years later. “I only wanted to see what it was like to kiss someone, before I tried it on with girls, you know. Experience.”

“Experience”, Toshi nodded dully. “Indeed. Except we were both teens and didn’t know what we were doing”, he continued, with pretend cheerfulness.

“It makes for a good story to tell fangirls, though”, Yoshiki went on.

“Do you wanna try it again now?” Toshi ventured, jokingly. “I don’t know about you, but I’m better at it now.”

Yoshiki kicked him so fiercely that Toshi slipped and sprained his ankle.

Yoshiki would always hit him for whatever reason, and Toshi sometimes retaliated, sometimes not. On the upside, they hugged each other just as fiercely. It was all an integral part of their relationship, and those who didn’t know them were surprised with how physical they were with each other.

“I can’t stop laughing. Your head looks like an egg now.”

“Get the hell away from me. I hate you.”

“You still look kind of cute.”

“Fuck you.”

“Where are you going? We still have rehearsals.”

“I don’t want to see any of you again, in my life!”

Toshi laughed gleefully, doubling over in mirth at Yoshiki’s tantrum. His head did look like an egg, hairless and stark white, save for a red mark like a bruise where perhaps the electric razor went too deep. Toshi could imagine Yoshiki had struggled and kicked all the way through it. 

Nishijima-san had warned Yoshiki, time and time again, about showing up to school with longer hair than regulation permitted, and everytime Yoshiki snubbed him. Everyone in class was waiting for something to give, but still no one expected Nishijima-san to snap unexpectedly one morning, and drag a kicking and screaming Yoshiki by his hair, out of the classroom. They were gone for a while, and the class could still hear Yoshiki screaming like he was being cut in two, but none of them moved from their seat. Then Nishijima-san returned, wiping his sweat with a handkerchief, and nursing two broken fingers, but with a triumphant, slightly manic smile. The class held its collective breath. Finally Yoshiki limped in as well, eyes shining with angry tears, his head completely shaved – and like the release of a dam, the tension released abruptly into laughter. Yoshiki paused in his tracks, with a longsuffering grimace, like he couldn’t believe the extent of his martyrdom. Then, still pouting, he slinked back to his seat.

Toshi had laughed with the rest, but now he was ready to cut Yoshiki some slack, except Yoshiki made it all so easy. Toshi couldn’t feel sorry for him in earnest because Yoshiki looked hilarious, like a baby chicken, and his childish tantrum made it all even funnier.

“Hiyokooo”, Toshi called him, dragging the last syllable teasingly, and got a kick in the shins.

“Hiyoko!” he’d call again, several months later, throwing pebbles at Yoshiki’s window.

It had become Yoshiki’s nickname, of sorts, not only Toshi but now also the other members in the band called him that. His hair had grown enough to arrange itself in short, soft curls around his face. They all wore make-up when they performed but only Yoshiki looked feminine with it. Yoshiki started wearing make-up in school as well – a bit of eyeliner, a bit of lipgloss, just enough to get away with it. If the teachers noticed, they said nothing. There was something in the way Yoshiki embraced his androgyny that made everyone draw back in respect. He played it just right – a game of artistry. They sensed it wasn’t about gender or sexuality – it was about aesthetics and identity. Yoshiki got into fights less now, but won more of them. Boys were more reluctant to hit him.

Toshi hadn’t seen Yoshiki in almost two weeks now. He didn’t come to school, or to band rehearshals. It fell on Toshi to look for him and bring him along for an overdue discussion with the other members, as he’d known Yoshiki the longest. Toshi knew or at least suspected what Yoshiki’s isolation was about, and didn’t look particularly forward to confronting him about it. As expected, Yoshiki’s mother told Toshi that her son wasn’t feeling well and he was sleeping, even though it was six o’clock in the afternoon. Toshi pretended to leave then snuck behind the house and started throwing pebbles at the window of the room on the second floor.

It worked eventually, and Yoshiki emerged from the house, dramatically dressed in black and wearing eyeliner, lips pursed, and nodding demurely to Toshi.

“Hello, Hiyoko, do you remember me?” Toshi said, a little resentfully. “The guys in the band are pissed, you could at least tell us when you want to disappear off the face of the earth, it’s only nice, you know?”

Yoshiki stated his apologies for inconveniencing them, as the rules of good conduct dictated, but could not be persuaded to come along with him.

“And why not?” Toshi asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Keiji died riding my motorcycle”, Yoshiki said mournfully. “Everyone around me is cursed. I will never ride that thing again and I’m giving up rock music for good. I will go to conservatory. I’ve already started studying hard for that.”

“That’s too bad”, Toshi answered. “What happened with Keiji shocked me too. But it was an accident-“

“I will never ride a bike again in my life.”

“That’s fine. But giving up rock music? I don’t see the logic,” Toshi tried to argue.

“I talked with mom and she made me see sense. I have to think about an education for myself now, I’ve been irresponsible far too long. I can still drum in my spare time, but-“

Toshi interrupted him with a bitter laugh.

“Well _, I_ just told my mother that I’m not going to medical school like she wants me to. I’m moving to Tokyo to make my own band. I want to become a rock star. I came here to ask you to come with me.”

In fact, Toshi told his mother nothing, but he decided everything in that moment. He didn’t know what made him do it. The words just spilled out of his mouth, and along with them, the certainty that this was what he wanted. In any case, he felt gratified by the look of wonder and amazement that crossed Yoshiki’s face.

“I... I need to think”, he stammered, and touched his hair nervously.

“Okay, but don’t take too long”, Toshi told him, taking courage from Yoshiki’s nervousness. “I’ll be going anyway, to Tokyo. But I need you to come as well.”

It felt too personal, so he added:

“Terry might be convinced to come along too.”

In Tokyo, at the very beginning, it sometimes felt as if they hit rock bottom and they should just quit, but now an older Toshi could look back at those times with smiling nostalgia. It was never bad back then – no, not genuinely _bad,_ despite all the rough patches and snubs and failures, because the future was ahead of them, and they were young, and the spirit inside them wouldn’t let them quit or die.

Yoshiki was overly emotional and frail, but also uncommonly stubborn, and Toshi soon learned that he only had to suggest that he, Toshi, was at the end of his rope, for Yoshiki to rally and show strength and persistence that one wouldn’t normally give him credit for.

“I’ll make it happen”, he told everyone. “I promise. You just have to trust me – and give me everything.”

Band members came and went, initially attracted by Yoshiki’s magnetism and driven away just as quickly by his quirks and inviolable set of rules. Most of them just wanted to jam and were content to play small clubs to a moderately sized audience. They weren’t prepared or willing to make sacrifices that came with true recognition and fame.

Sometimes band members left with cruel parting words, on one momentous occasion announcing it to the audience during a live concert, pronouncing that the band was not worth it. It all seemed so futile, and even Yoshiki despaired, telling Toshi: “Maybe we should quit.” With a chill of dread, Toshi thought about his mother, welcoming him back with a sour smile and an ‘I told you so’. He’d rather die than allow that to happen. And by then he realized, if Yoshiki hadn’t been there with him, he would never have made it so far alone. Yoshiki’s mother helped him substantially with money without which they would never have managed.

So Toshi got Yoshiki drunk and told him that this band, and him, Yoshiki, too - was everything to him.

 _Make of that what you will_ , Toshi told him. _I’m in your hands_. _I’m in your care, Yoshiki._ _If you quit, I quit – there’s nothing left for me to do but bury myself into an empty life. It’s worse than dying, Yoshiki. And you know about dying, don’t you. Don’t let me go, please. Never let me go._

Of course, that was before _all that._

Before Toshi was the one who left Yoshiki.

Back then, they both cried and promised to each other they’d stick together. They stumbled to a hotel room, drunk out of their wits, and before they could decide what they wanted to do with each other, they fell asleep in a heap, fully clothed on the king-size bed. They held on to each other like children afraid of being abandoned, not like lovers.

But that next morning in the shower, trying to unclench his jaw petrified by alcohol and thirst, a dazed Toshi realized he was in miserable love with Yoshiki. It was all a mess, and he laughed so that he would not cry.

They returned to their shared apartment in Tokyo that day and resolved to look for new band members. Despite the fact that he resolved to keep fighting, Yoshiki was depressed. He caught a flu which Toshi also caught from him, but soon recovered. Yoshiki’s flu did not want to go away – the lethargy, fever, coughing and shortness of breath persisted for weeks. Toshi remembered that as a child, Yoshiki was sick often and missed school a lot because of complications. He suggested that he go to the hospital, but Yoshiki refused and went about his business. It was only when Yoshiki collapsed that Toshi realized that Yoshiki wanted this to happen. He played with illnesses like with familiar childhood friends – and if they ended up killing him, then all the better. There was no use scolding him for it, Yoshiki would take it as a sign of interest in his ailments, and turn it up a notch, so that next time he would be scolded even worse for neglecting his health. All interest was a good thing to Yoshiki. That he was hurting too, that couldn’t be helped. The physical pain was better still than the mental pain.

Yoshiki was a difficult person to love, and Toshi never quite learned how to do it and not get hurt.

If Toshi came in and saw Yoshiki’s eyes were red and swollen, he was better pretending not to notice. But if during the night, he heard muffled sobs from the adjoining room, he was allowed to come inside the darkened room and wordlessly climb into Yoshiki’s bed and comfort him. Never with words – those were dealbreakers, and Toshi never knew what to say anyway. He would caress Yoshiki’s hair and naked back – Yoshiki never faced him in bed, even though it was dark. Soon the sobs would subside and then Toshi would hesitantly press closer. Yoshiki was by now pretending to be asleep, so it was okay to hold him. Then they would both fall asleep for real.

When Taiji came to share an apartment with them, he was taken aback by this arrangement, when he had first discovered it.

“What the fuck are you guys doing?” he asked, curious and just a bit jealous, masking it under pretend disgust.

Toshi simply shushed him, and reached out an arm, pulling him down on the bed with them.

“What the hell?” Taiji scoffed, as he was trapped down with arms and legs in the warm cocoon. The murmuring got milder, dying off in a deprecating laugh, as Yoshiki placed a palm over his mouth. All three of them were drunk so they fell fast asleep in no time.

Yoshiki reveled in his suffering, displaying it lavishly like a favourite set of beads around his neck – he embraced his misery like a lover and those around him found themselves trapped in the same cloying embrace. Toshi too – _especially_ Toshi. Yoshiki seemed to think that because Toshi had known him the longest and had stuck by him faithfully, never raising his voice in opposition, that Toshi belonged to him irreparably, like a limb or an automated part of a whole which cannot function on its own.

“I know your voice better than you do”, Yoshiki had told him once. Toshi’s throat was bleeding raw at the time, so he didn’t answer. That was when everything started falling apart. Yoshiki’s dominance, something Toshi had once found appealing, become an oppression that he struggled against.

And that was the problem, really. In a way, that was the beginning of the end.

There was something Toshi realized when he came face to face with the final resting place of a friend. He’d been there before, of course. And he’d buried many friends. But there was something about that day, the jarring contrast between the camera crew trying to capture the right lighting for the documentary, the stubborn wind that had a different agenda, Taiji’s small, narrow grave, easy to pass by unnoticed, if you didn’t know what to look for. Something about the line that he was supposed to utter “At least I’m alive”-

It was just a line but it had never felt so real. Not even in the aftermath of Hide’s death, when Toshi, confused and scared, had gone to take his final farewell.

They had played so much with acting out tragedies, but when tragedies struck they found themselves barren, defenseless, crippled. Yoshiki was the worst. Watching him break apart for real was anything but the aesthetic spectacle he always aimed to put on, so he was acting, always acting. Toshi saw right through him - straight through the layers of make-up and crocodile tears, the awkward, scared little boy who craved acceptance, affection, recognition.

Toshi stared at Taiji’s grave and remembered that time long ago when the three of them had shared a bed like wayward children, in spite of all their daylight arguments, only happy to feel each other’s warmth and closeness.

Yoshiki was fixing his hair, trying to get it to stay in place or at least artfully tousled, but the wind had a will of its own.

“It brings a touch of drama”, the director said.

They moved the cameras around a few times, before they found the best angles.

The best bassist in Japan slept for eternity in a plot of land so narrow, they almost passed it by without noticing. The photo on the slab was that of a young Taiji, stylish and defiant. Toshi had been more fond of Taiji than anyone else in the band, not counting his complicated relationship with Yoshiki. And yet, as he stood there, Toshi’s sadness and pity wasn’t for his old friend, whom luck had continuously evaded – it was for himself.

“At least I’m alive” – _It could have been_ me _in this small, unassuming resting place, a scene in a documentary, a footnote in the history of music, a few extra lines in the history of X Japan. It very nearly_ was _me. I’m scared – I’m still so scared, with all that’s happened, I don’t think I will ever be rid of the constant fear. The fear of dying or the fear of failing? I don’t know, it’s all a blur. It’s all the same to me. Yoshiki, I’m scared. Please understand me for once. Love me. Love me._

A grave is where we’ll all end up in.

Narrow or wide, what does it matter?

A grave an end for all our struggle, our pain, our passion, our scheming, our worldly possessions.

The best you can do is put on your mask, take one look in the mirror at your painted self, nod and carry on through it - to the end, whenever that end may come – with even a shred of dignity.

And if Toshi would get to say some last words to Yoshiki – who was so busy these days, always running from one place to another, like trying to run away from death itself like the gardener in the Arabian tale – but if he, Toshi, could get some time alone with him, truly alone, out of the reach of cameras, unmoderated and unscripted, he’d say.... Well, in the end, what could he possibly say that would not go against every bit of common sense and propriety?

“I love you”? That went without saying. In fact, Toshi had said it before. Yoshiki was pitifully awkward with such raw confessions - he either got overly emotional, or blocked it out entirely; although he reacted well to the blind adoration of people who only knew him superficially.

No, the drama was for the cameras only.

“We had some good times”, Toshi would maybe say, with a pale smile, but he would somehow mean it.


End file.
